Mutation and permanence in the city fabric of Tarragona

The proposed research is the result of the study carried out with the master's degree in Architecture coordinated by prof. M. Ieva, at the dICAR Department of the Polytechnic of Bari, on the city of Tarragona. The aim of this research is the investigation and reconstruction of the ancient forma urbis using the typological-procedural method. Tarragona, located in eastern Spain in the autonomous community of Catalonia, is a crucible of different realities that have their origins since the 5th century BC with the allocation of Iberian populations along the shores of the The Mediterranean Sea. However, it is only in 218 BC with the Roman colonization that its appearance changes becoming one of the most important centers of the Roman Empire: Tarraco. The analysis on the formative and transformation phases of the settlement takes as its point of origin this historical moment going to read the ancient substratum that remains between the wires of the city as it appears today. The present city, whose visible aspect is marked by deep signs and lacerations that have occurred over time, is the result of conspicuous mutations, such as: the abandonment, the redevelopment, the destruction, the reconstruction, of which we have tried, with the present study, to reconstruct the fragments. From this kaleidoscopic image it is, however, possible to extrapolate the constants of the way of civil’s being that have, over time, characterized its complex configuration. The study highlights the essential signs of the structuring that took place, with the aim of clarifying the mechanics of anthropization at different scales. The territorial one, for example, still shows the ancient centurial limites with which the Roman agrimensores have regularized and planned the context for agricultural purposes. At a urban scale they are identified in the ordered traces of the original settled nucleus and show, at the same time, the variable characters of building types. In this regard the type represents the "concept of home", proper to every culture, in a particular time and diatopically variable. With this aim, both the residential building types and the special types, that is not specifically intended for a residential purpose, have been reconstructed in their temporal evolution, recognizing the main ones and the synchronic and diachronic variants. From these first observations, it can be highilighted that the proposed analysis follows the aim of interpreting the transformations that have taken place in the city over the centuries, as a manifestation of human action in view of satisfying their needs, explaining the interest to not solve them only pragmatically, but considering that in every period there is a significant aesthetic-linguistic research. The history of a place, the collection of sources and documents, read within a critical vision that tries to summarize the events that have taken place, represent in these cases an indispensable tool through which a confirmation is sought for conjectural hypotheses or, inversely , we wonder about a truth that the built could conceal in the form of a substratum. The purpose of this study on Tarragona, using this method, makes it possible to conceive the city as a living body which must also be interpreted in order to intercept possible actions of intervention that may be congruent with the recognized structural character. It is necessary, therefore, to recognize the sequence of mutations and permanence that have occurred in a place especially if we are called to operate in the historical heritage with interventions that must be posed, in the opinion of the writer, in continuity and not in opposition to the existing, because the pure replica of the past is a sterile action and at the same time, paraphrasing the words of George Kubler in “The shape of time", the invention without the recognition of the rules traced by the paths of tradition is destined to be an act incapable of guaranteeing continuity of the "urban factory" on which we operate.

Obiettivo della ricerca intrapresa con la tesi di laurea magistrale in Architettura coordinata dal prof. M. Ieva, nel Dipartimento dICAR del Politecnico di Bari, sulla città di Tarragona è quello di ricostruire l’antica forma urbis della città attraverso il metodo tipologico - processuale capace di leggere le trasformazioni dello spazio antropico ai fini della pratica dell’architettura. Tarragona, città della Spagna orientale situata nella comunità autonoma della Catalogna, trova la propria origine nel V secolo a.C. con lo stanziamento di popolazioni iberiche lungo le rive del mar Mediterraneo. Tuttavia è solo nel 218 a.C. con la colonizzazione romana che il suo aspetto muta diventando una dei più importanti centri dell’Impero romano: Tarraco. Lo studio della storia, inveratesi nelle forme mutevoli e permanenti della città, è stato essenziale per estrapolare e comprendere le ragioni che hanno spinto la città a trasformarsi e modificarsi nel tempo. La storia, infatti, legittima le trasformazioni del passato e accompagna quelle derivanti da un proiectus architettonico futuro. A tal proposito per delineare la chiave interpretativa del metodo risultano particolarmente efficaci le parole di George Kubler quando nel libro “La forma del tempo” esprime il rapporto tra la conoscenza e lo scorrere del tempo: “Il tempo come la mente non è conoscibile in quanto tale. Possiamo conoscere il tempo soltanto indirettamente attraverso quanto in esso avviene. Osserando cioè mutamento e permanenza, seguendo la successione di eventi con riferimento a punti fissi e notando il contrasto dei vari ritmi di mutamento.”